Chistmas - A Time For Giving

Well it is on Ipoker. On the advice of a friend who works for a company that has an Ipoker skin, the £/€ tables are ridiculously soft, despite the fact that you get bum-raped for rake - so I took a stab at them. In just under 10,000 hands, nearly all at £50nl, due to some decent play, massive lucksacking and the generousity of some of my opponents, I am up approximately $2,000 in December. I'm fairly happy about this as I was really starting to question just how shit I was - so many thanks to Tommy Angelo for making me less of a tiltbox and Aero for making me less bad at heads-up poker.

I haven't run well in donkaments, although my horse has done the biz by clearing $4.5k of make-up and delivering a solid profit after a nice score. I also won a silly Full Tilt PLHE tournament earlier today for $1.1k which covered some over my other losses during the holiday period.

I doubt I'll play much more bar a little heads-up before 2010 begins. I have some administrative shit to do and the New Year begins with a hangover, followed by a wedding on the 2nd of January and then West Ham vs. Arsenal in the FA Cup on the 3rd, where we will have a spotty 17 year old up front and endure almost certain defeat to the French cheats. After that we'll sell most of our best players and prepare ourselves for a game with Leeds in the Championship, which should please Asterix.

I haven't got much else to add - although if you have a little time I recommend the recent posts in "Clarkatroid is not folding" - link on the right. His last post of 2009 in particular was superb and well worth a read.

I was sat thinkig about this time last year - when I went to bed on New Year's Eve my Dad was scheduled to have a massive operation to remove cancer from his neck. He was crapping himself as they were going to have to basically cut out two of the vertebrae in his neck to remove it. It turned out the cancer had gone too far for that so he spent the early part of 2009 receiving radiotherapy and chemotherapy. He has responded well and whilst he still has cancer, he looks a shite sight better than he could and the doctors are really pleased. I hope I look that good when I get to his age. The whole episode has put life into perspective and I have received a lot of support from many people, including readers of this blog - once again, thanks for all of this, it has meant a lot to me.

I hope all of you had a good Christmas. Best wishes for the New Year, may you spike 2 outers where you receive them and may a flaming grease bus run over anyone that berates you in the chat box. Good luck at the tables and I'll see you in 2010.

Rolled

Yes, I got rolled. I had some problems signing in to my online banking on Friday. I thought nothing of it and tried again on Saturday, to encounter more problems. I phoned NatWest, who were fucking unhelpful and told me to call again the next day. After 20 minutes of bullshit from NatWest, I finally got through to their online fraud team. It turns out that some cunt had robbed £5k from my account on Friday. The guy put all the necessary blocks on my account and told me to call at 8:30 sharp on Monday to discuss recovering the money, which I did. By 9:15 they had told me I would have the money back in my account in two hours.

All of this is pretty scary. I’m not the most technologically savvy of individuals, but I’m better than many in this respect. It also happened when I was at work – I nearly always log in when I am at work for security reasons – so I need to have a word with the IT guys here. The NatWest online fraud team were first class to be fair – everyone else that I dealt with fell somewhere in between useless and unhelpful and did everything that they could have. It’s a jungle out there kids – be careful.

Pokerwise HU has gone well – I have logged 8 consecutive profitable sessions, putting me (excluding rakeback) back at even for the month. Donkaments last week were a disaster, and I cashed in precisely none of the ten or so that I played. My last day at work this year is Tuesday, so I am hoping to increase the pokerage from Wednesday onwards.

West Ham also got rolled up at Birmingham. By all accounts it was a pretty bad performance, despite Dyer hitting the post for us late on. We go to Bolton on Wednesday with me expecting to leave with the usual Kevin Davies-inflicted defeat and heading back to the Boleyn to play Chelsea on Sunday in shreds.

My Christmas shopping is now largely done, thank fuck. All I need to do now is wrap the stuff, which I am not looking forward to.

Good luck at the tables, I’ll probably try and prepare some standard end of year review entry.

Vomit Inducing

I’ve played a modest amount of HU over the last week or so. After playing half-pissed and dropping $130 to a mixture of coolers and my own bad play (and a lesson which hopefully I have learnt so I won’t play when half-cut again), I’ve recovered all of it and then some at the Ipoker £/€ tables, which are an awesome source of value, even if you do get ass-raped on the rake. The software has improved so that it now looks like it was made in around 1997 and I am reliably informed that they should be getting resizable tables in the next release, scheduled for January next year. You have to hand it to Ipoker, they make the Cereus network look cutting-edge in comparison.

Her indoors is due to be out all night tomorrow so I should be able to get in some donkaments for the first time in a while. Hopefully I can run like MI Turtle and win 70% of the tournaments that I enter.

A really weak Man Utd side thrashed West Ham on Saturday (they ended up with one recognised defender in the back four). They didn’t get out of first gear and won at a canter. I have serious concerns over some of the manager’s decisions (albeit that he is doing a job with half the tools and is probably the best man for it) – we keep chopping and changing our back four, surely somebody should have an idea what exactly our best back four is? We also left a clearly injured forward on the pitch for five minutes and the end of the first half, which caused us to concede the first goal – it was absolutely schoolboy and people around me were going mental before the goal went in about Zola not taking action and getting a sub on. I’m not sure what is going to happen but if we stay up it will be based on everyone around us being shit, and not us being good. Rob Green spent most of the second half throwing up on the pitch before being subbed off, I’m not sure if him being sick was a response to illness or the performance of the side as a defensive unit.

On the plus side, Spurs went 2-0 up against Everton, threw away a two goal lead and then missed a last minute penalty. I’m sure Redknapp was twitching like a good ‘un on the touchline when Little Arnold smacked that penalty straight at Howard. I was laughing so hard that I nearly shat myself and it made me forget a little about the defeat the previous day. The other highlight of the weekend was this incident – I’ve always thought Pulis was something of a twat and deserving of a slap.

We’ve had some good news at work which should hopefully help me out financially with the wedding coming up. Nothing is confirmed yet but this should all be ironed out over the next couple of weeks.

Good luck at the tables.

On The Rebound

Like the filthy whore that I am, I found myself utterly unable to resist the lure of rakeback at Ipoker and returned to playing HU there ($50NL). This has gone surprisingly well, due to various things – mainly (1) the terrible standard of play (2) me having improved considerably and (3) me being about 3% of the tiltbox that I was previously thanks to Tommy Angelo. A reg that I simply could not beat previously (not due to running bad, simply because I couldn’t exploit how he was playing) sat with me at two tables – despite not playing many huge pots or flipping at all, I beat him out of two buy-ins – not that this is much of a guide to how well I have been playing, but I felt totally in control of the match for the majority of the time.

I’m hoping that the last two week or so of me playing in a more considered and less tilty fashion and being less results-oriented will continue. I was off work yesterday, recovering from a nasty stomach upset and managed 1700 hands for a $200 profit, which was good for morale.

There has been little else going on – West Ham beat Burnley 5-3 on Saturday. After an hour of devastating attacking football putting us 5-0 ahead, our failings were exposed (i.e. not having a right back) and we looked really shaking at the end. The pluses (Parker, Franco, our attacking football) were largely overshadowed by the negatives (defending, letting a team that we had crushed back into the game, Cole sustaining a nasty knee injury that will leave him out for at least a month).

The FA Cup provided a nice home tie against Arsenal. Sadly I am at a wedding that day so hopefully Sky will move the fixture to the Sunday, thereby inconveniencing everyone else except me. Leeds (Boooooo! Hissssssssss! etc.) will play Manchester United as long as they get past Kettering, which will be the usual warm friendly affair, I’m sure Asterix will be watching the game in Austria in a sedate fashion and not launching beer glasses at the TV whilst shouting “cunt” every time the camera pans to The Imperial Lord Ferg. We have those cunts at home next week (The Mancs, not Leeds, we’ll be playing them in the Championship next season though), although I hold out little hope for a result.

I fucking love FA Cup third round day, it is still my favourite day of the football calendar. This is amazing given how often my own side departs the competition at this stage. I remember as a young boy when we got knocked out by Torquay and John Lyall’s excuse was “it was a warm night for January” which was an absolute pearler, even that cunt Redknapp would struggle to top that one.

I’ll update later on plans for the stag, although I can’t imagine why you lot are so interested in me spending a weekend with a chin-mounted dildo super-glued to my face whilst being heavily intoxicated.

Good luck at the tables.

It’s Oh So Quiet

As you can probably judge from the increased number of blog entries, work is pretty quiet at the moment. With the company being up for sale, a lack of clear price trend in the markets and Christmas approaching, there appears to be something of a “what we have, we hold mentality” going on.

I played some tournaments on Friday. I made the last two tables of the $50 1r 1a on Full Tilt and cashed in the $80k guaranteed on Stars (I was amongst the chip leaders for a while and had 9,000 chips after two hands when people threw chips at me like they were on fire) but failed to win crucial 60/40s. I managed to play most of the evening in a fairly zen state and even managed to type “nh gg” when busting in the 80k when someone shoved J7hh into my AJ and flopped a flush.

I then played some really good HU for a while on Sunday, played for far too long, got tilty and went from $300 profit to a $100 loss fairly quickly and hated myself for it. That said I switched back to Ipoker *spit* on Monday night and played a reasonably long $50NL session without getting tilty at any point.

Outside of work I’ve returned to the gym and an working on being less of a fat cunt. Wonderflop is doing the same thing but has some lame routine involving salads and fruit juice, which sounds a lot like hard work to me. Hopefully he’ll be back on two pizzas for lunch fairly soon to make me feel a lot better about myself.

On a more serious note, I was pleased to see Wayne’s coach confirm that he’d been running like total shit. We regularly go through his sessions and the poor bastard did seem to keep getting violated by either getting massively coolered or sucked out on in every big pot – stuff like this can really knock your confidence so it is reassuring to have a guy that knows (and virtually every source possible confirms that his coach should know).

West Ham contrived to throw a two goal lead away at Hull on Saturday and eventually drew 3-3. Clattenburg awarded a penalty that wasn’t even close to being one and Bullard scored a doubled deflected free kick. We really need to tighten up at the back and concede less from set pieces, but we did look somewhat unlucky. Upson and possibly Behrami are rumoured to be off in January (Upson hasn’t looked all too interested in the last few games) – we can’t continue to sell good players, not replace them and simply hope that everyone around us continues to be shit. Da Costa has been a pleasant surprise at centre-back so far though, so I hope his form continues.

We play Burnley at home next Saturday. I’m looking forward to it – there are four of us going, including a mate of mine who is (I think) Head of Online Gaming at William Hill. He normally has some good poker related gossip, so I’m looking forward to catching up as he lives in Gibraltar and I don’t see him too often. On Sunday I am going for lunch with my parents and Lucy’s parents, which hopefully won’t be too painful.

I spoke to a couple of people at a social gathering on Saturday and sorted out my best man for my wedding. We also agreed on a possible joint stag do in Amsterdam, where I am likely to be hugely violated by my “friends” so two months may not be enough to recover for the wedding.

Good luck at the tables.

GG Shaun Fucking Deeb, We (Alright, I) Hardly Knew You

Trawling TwoPlusTwo yesterday afternoon I was surprised to come across this post from Shaun Deeb. Before I go any further, I should make it clear – I don’t know Shaun and anything that I have picked up here is largely from stuff written on the forums.
When I first read his post I felt slightly sad (which is retarded given that I don’t know the guy) – Shaun is clearly one of the best, if not the best, tournament grinders out there. There was some stuff written by Seabeast a while ago where people were chuntering on about variance he mentioned Shaun and said that to him that it is no surprise that those that work the hardest and treat the game with the most respect seem to have the best results. I guess Shaun’s retirement (at a guess it will be a break and not a retirement, but what do I know?) shows just how playing a heavy schedule day in, day out can take its toll.

I read some stuff from Sheets a while ago where he mentioned that whilst Shaun had his run-ins with people, he gave advice very freely to people he didn’t know. He was always helpful around MTT strategy on TwoPlusTwo and helped out on threads from five dollar players – which I guess underlines his point. HIV mentioned that Deeb had probably taught the MTT community at TwoPlusTwo more than anyone else – I’d tend to agree. He wrote a pretty epic guide to playing the 180s, which was a total gift to low stakes players.

A while back I was watching the EPT Monte Carlo main event final table. They brought Shaun in to commentate. Shaun’s grammar is something of a standing joke around the forums so I was interested to see how he came across. He spoke really well and clearly, and along with that, gave probably the most insightful poker commentary I’ve ever heard which let me know exactly how little I know about the game and dispelled any ideas that people may have about him being some sort of variance monkey.

With the Deeb cock-sucking over, we should get down to the serious subject matter – Deeb related humour. Hopefully you will enjoy the following:

1) Shaun’s live record isn’t up to scratch relative to his online record. Here TwoPlusTwo speculates on what Shaun might be thinking just before he busts out of a live event.

2) Shaun and Derek8 have had something of a rivalry going for the Stars TLB and have a mutual dislike of each other, so it was nice to see Derek8 putting personal differences to one side to congratulate his opponent with a nice private message.

3) Shaun’s grammar on the forums has provided a lot of entertainment, spawning the gimmick account “Deeb Spell Check”and Bond 18’s comment following Shaun’s input on his excellent Things It Took Me A While To Learn series (this is excellent reading for any tournament player and would recommend you bookmark it if you are one). “Thanks for your input Shaun. It only took me 78 hours and two seizures to turn it into understandable English.”

So, whatever Shaun chooses to do in future – I wish him all the best and hope he finds happiness. On the plus side, every MTT player’s expected ROI just jumped up a notch with him not being around any longer.

I Rack Disciprine

Or in English (and to non-South Park viewers), “I lack discipline”. I played a pretty interesting 50NL session with Bart (one of Aero’s other students) which we both recorded to give to Aero. He’s going to use this to make a video where both of our cards can be seen, which should be pretty cool. I finished down around a buy-in to Bart, which wasn’t bad – I felt that he was a marginally better player than me and being down a buy-in was probably fairly reflective. I don’t think we managed to get all in at any point, so basically it was a four hundred hand epic nit-off.

After that I was pretty tired and played some $100NL. I felt myself getting kind of tilty and should have quit but, like an asshat, kept playing and made one blatant tilt call that cost me a full stack. I finished down $200 for the night, hopefully I will learn my lesson, and hopefully I will get to the Tommy Angelo video on quitting sooner rather than later before it costs me too much more money.

I’m considering moving back to Chili next month to benefit from the rakeback there. Hopefully I won’t get such a no-lube violation from their RNG this time. I’m not sure as yet, I like the liquidity of the player pool at Stars but the rakeback is a fairly hefty incentive.

I should be able to get a solid donkament session in on Friday night. Hopefully I can continue my epic run good from the last few sessions I have played and push on through for a top three place in something.

The action at the nosebleeds continues. DogIsHead wrote a pretty awesome blog post which gives some pretty good insight. I don’t necessarily buy into some of the USA vs. Europe stuff but the bits on Isildur’s game are fairly insightful and well worth a read.

The highlight thus far for me hasn’t been the sheer amount of cash changing hands but Ziigmund’s charming request for Isildur to loan him half a million dollars. I’m not sure if he got the money, but his novel approach below is an interesting alternative to putting a suit on and going and asking your bank manger for $500,000 so you can go and degen it up.

"Ziigmund: hey u f ag

Isildur1: what u say

Ziigmund: can u lend me 500

Ziigmund: back in 2 hours

Isildur1: ??"

The World Cup play-offs concluded last night. Thierry Henry proved that you can take the boy out of Arsenal but you can’t take Arsenal out of the boy with his handball that lead to the winning goal. I don’t buy all of the nice guy stuff that Match Of The Day and the rest portray, I still remember seeing a young Henry waving the imaginary card at Upton Park when one of our players dared to foul one of his team mates. I’m no Ireland fan but I’d rather them in the finals than France – they would have taken a load of support and are clearly a weaker team than France.

West Ham are away at Hull this weekend. I really wanted to go but we have a big do with a load of friends lined up in the afternoon. It is a relegation six-pointer, I’m hoping we catch a few breaks and defend a bit tighter than we have. On the plus side, Carlton Goal has recovered from injury and will be fit, whilst Phil Brown’s sun tan will continue to glow from the opposition bench. I’ve said it before – he has too much tan and too much jewellery for a bloke and reminds me of a bit of a Northern Alan Pardew. I wonder if Phil will follow in Alan’s footsteps and go roaring up various… I’d better end here to avoid legal action.

Good luck at the tables.